Hush Hush (2 page)

Her mother’s
daughter, she tsked disapprovingly. Sugar was the preservative, no
doubt. Sadie would’ve recommended straining out the sauce
altogether, wherein lurked the dreaded sugar. But that was not
Angela’s way. In fact, she now felt determined to mop up every
last drop of sauce with
‒
the stock cube? Damn. She’d forgotten she had no bread. Memory
like a sieve, she recalled belatedly. I don’t have a sieve,
either.

Sadie had those
artful ways of mending and making do
‒
boiling up soup out of chicken bones, stitching old bra cups into her
bathing costume to make it last longer when the Lycra sagged
‒
that were beyond Angela, child of the throwaway society. Sadie was
proud of the fact that back in rural County Clare in the 1950s,
family members wasted not and wanted not by sharing each other’s
dentures, spectacles and bath water. When Angela’s father died,
Sadie had appropriated his reading glasses. Angela found this
ghoulish.

Sadie rang while
Angela was eating her congealed beans.

‘
Hello, Ma,’
said Angela cautiously.

Angela loved Sadie.
But it was a gift of love wrapped up in a thorny package of resentful
childhood memories and dishonourable teenhood defeats. Added to this
was guilt. Guilt that any half-decent daughter should love her mother
unreservedly. Guilt that Sadie, the strong one for so long, was
growing frail, and Angela was trying not to notice. Anyway, it wasn’t
fair. As a healthy, hearty, overstrict mother, Sadie had held the
whip-hand. She wasn’t getting the upper hand again, by virtue
of an age and frailty that warranted respect and making allowances.

‘
Now then,
Angela,’ began Sadie. She had a low, growly, radio voice, lent
added attractiveness by an Irish burr.
‘
Rachel
told me you’ve got a job.’

‘
Bloody hell,
that didn’t take long!’ exploded Angela
‒
and not from curried beans.
‘
Talk
about Chinese whispers. Rache only left here five minutes ago. That
was fast work, even for you two.’

‘
Rachel was
passing the bus-stop and gave me a lift home,’ replied Sadie
mildly.
‘
So
have you got a job or not? Why tell her you had if you haven’t?’

‘
I didn’t!
I said I was putting out feelers.’

Sadie waited.

‘
About
sub-editing back on a women’s mag in London,’ growled
Angela.
‘
And
actually
‒
you might as well know
‒
I got an offer this morning. I didn’t tell Rachel or even you,
because I was weighing up the pros and cons.’

Sadie’s bottom
teeth did a little castanet dance of excitement.
‘
What’s
to weigh up, lovey? It’ll do you the world of good to go back
to work. Help take your mind off the last terrible year, and the
money’s a bonus, of course.’

In her house on the
other side of Wilmesbury, Sadie grimaced at herself in the hallway
mirror. She usually got foot-in-mouth disease talking to Angela. She
sensed Angela’s tense expectation of being insulted, however
obliquely, and her responding nervousness usually obliged.

‘
Which
magazine is it?’ asked Sadie humbly.

‘
Er
‒
well
‒
oh God, my saucepan is boiling over, Mum. I’ll have to go.’

‘
I’ll
wait while you turn it down.’

Angela clattered the
receiver onto the table and glared at it. Bloody hell, now what? She
had to think fast.

She picked up the
phone again.
‘
It’s
a new launch,’ she said weakly.
‘
So
everything’s hush-hush. I can’t even tell you the title
until the first issue hits the stands. I haven’t got an exact
start date, either.’

‘
OK, lovey.’
If Sadie smelt a rat, she was playing it deadpan.
‘
How
about meeting up in town tomorrow for lunch? My treat, to celebrate
your new job. I’m so proud of you! After all the ups and downs
since Robert.’ She honked emotionally into a hanky.
‘
Would
you like that, Ange?’

‘
Er
‒
great,’ said Angela, feeling sick.
‘
I’ll
meet you outside Baggio’s at one. Gotta go now. See ya.’

‘
Wait! And
after lunch, I thought we’d look in the sale at DFS. Now don’t
argue, Angela. You need a new suite, and now you’re earning
…
earning properly again, I mean
…
look, I know it’s horrible throwing out stuff you chose
together as a couple. Kind of a reminder you’re moving on
without him. Everything’s tough, I know, when you’re not
long widowed.’

Practically chewing
the phone in her desire to escape, Angela tensed. She translated
‘
not
long widowed’ as
‘
not
able to cope.’ Was Sadie implying that she’d never catch
up with her in the coping with widowhood stakes?

Well, Sadie had a
five-year head start. Also, she’d been widowed at sixty-two
when, reflected Angela, you were psychologically prepared, however
subconsciously, for the sudden cull of your life partner.

‘
Interior
design has been low on my list of priorities,’ sniffed Angela.
‘
But
I am prepared to refocus on the petty trivia of life. Suede or mock
suede? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the wallet
to go for a colour that hides stains or just buy bigger cushions.’

‘
Don’t
be sarky, Ange.’ Angela could hear real hurt in Sadie’s
voice. Straightforward abuse she understood. Sarcasm she did not.

‘
Sorry, Ma,’
said Angela sincerely.
‘
I’d
genuinely appreciate you casting a critical eye over the stuff in
DFS. See you tomorrow.’

They hung up,
mutually frustrated by the conversation.

Angela scoured her
bean-studded saucepan, wishing she could wipe out her lie about the
job just as thoroughly. Somehow, Sadie had forced her into it
‒
ringing up, all agog, practically demanding that she’d got
herself a job! Oh hell, thought Angela, wringing her scouring pad
instead of her hands. That won’t wash. It’s my fault. Mum
asked me a perfectly direct question and I fluffed it.

She
put the clean saucepan back in the cupboard and sat down in the
darkening kitchen. She liked to sit in the dark a lot. Night was the
perfect cover for minute self-analysis. Basically, where Sadie was
concerned, Angela was a really thick lab rat. No matter how many
times she reached the heart of the maze, she never made the
connection between the electric shock and reaching for the cheese.

Sadie filled a bowl with cat food and
dropped it on the kitchen floor. She didn’t trust herself to
bend from the waist. She might stick there, like those petrified
people from Pompeii. Consequently, when the bowl fell to the floor,
it wobbled like a tired whipping top and dark chunks of
tuna-with-rabbit hopped onto the tiles.

Binky slunk in and
nosed the escaped morsels fastidiously. He looked up at Sadie,
awarding nul points for presentation.

‘
You know,
she’s getting back on track,’ Sadie told him.
‘
She
did enough crying on Christmas Day to irrigate Africa, but they say
you have to cry it out before you work it out.’ Sadie paused,
unwilling to relive her own bereavement.
‘
Anyway,
point is, she’s turned the corner. Now, if she could find a
nice man to look after her. I know, I know,’ she muttered
guiltily, as Binky looked at her again. She’d learnt to invest
Binky’s single expression with all the nuances pertinent to his
role as devil’s advocate.
‘
Robert’s
only a year dead. But if she waits too long, she’ll be forty
before she knows it. And I read somewhere, a woman can forget it
after forty. Even men who are out there second time around have been
snapped up. Still, she might meet someone in this new job.’

It was unusually
secretive of Angela to apply for a job without a hint of her
intentions. Maybe all those tears on Christmas Day had bucked her
into a new year’s resolution to start over. Good for her!

Sadie herself had
felt pretty tearful on Christmas Day. Fenton wasn’t there to
make familiar jokes about her lumpy gravy, while Owen rang briefly on
a scratchy line from Canada and sounded indecently happy not to be in
Wilmesbury. She’d grieved for Robert because Angela was
breaking her heart over him. She’d always thought Robert a
nice, unremarkable man.

But
even on their wedding day, a sneaky little serpent had bedded down in
Sadie’s bosom, hissing its certainty that Angela could’ve
done better. Now, of course, Robert was beatified by untimely death.
But the serpent went on hissing softly, no louder than waves brushing
shingle. His death gave her a second chance.

Angela lay in bed, stroking herself in the dark,
imagining Robert doing the same. Usually, this gave her solace
(sometimes a DIY orgasm), but tonight she was distracted by her Great
Lie. Why had she said it? Who in their right minds would employ a
totally useless woman who’d been out of the workforce for four
years?

Not
totally
useless, a
little chirrup of self-esteem insisted. She had managed to keep body
and soul together in the previous year. If Rachel and Sadie thought
her capable of landing a decent job, maybe she should start thinking
the same?

The summer after A levels
‒
the summer she met Robert
‒
was also the summer that gave Angela her lifelong hangup about
seeking, and finding, a job.

She trailed home
after her last exam, swinging her satchel in a heat haze, inhaling
the sharp scent of mown grass and the mellower bouquet of freedom. As
she meandered through the kitchen door, Sadie, thumping pastry on a
worktop, looked up and said,
‘
Lal
Doherty’s got you into the frozen food place for six weeks. You
start the day after you break up.’

‘
What? No way,
Ma!’ Jolted out of her reverie, Angela collapsed into a chair.

‘
Now don’t
let me down, love,’ pounded Sadie. Her pastry-pounding was
unnerving. She had a pugilist’s blunt intent.
‘
Lal’s
pulled strings to get you into the wages office instead of the
factory floor. Told them you were a bright girl, probably going to
university, so they’ve taken you on without an interview. It’s
only making up pay packets and sorting out the canteen money for the
bank.’

Angela slumped
deeper into her chair, not even thinking of enlisting her dad.
Sadie’s word was law.

‘
You might’ve
asked, Mum! I’m crap at maths
‒
grade D remember? You know what’ll happen. The first time I
make a mistake, all these left-school-at-sixteen types will go,
“
I
thought you had A levels
”
and
“
So
much for education, if you can’t do a bit of long division in
your head.
”
Bloody hell!’

‘
Oh now, don’t
be gutless, lovey,’ cooed Sadie, letting the bad language go.
‘I
can’t let Lal down.’ That had
always been the way with Sadie. She pretended (or believed) that it
was she, not Angela, who would face the direst consequences of foiled
plans laid on Angela’s behalf.

It had taken Angela
another couple of years to recognise this as emotional blackmail. She
should’ve said,
‘
Stuff
Lal Doherty. I never asked him to do me a favour, and this is my last
summer before I have to go to work for ever, so I want to enjoy it.’

She’d already
decided not to go to university. She’d pre-empted her decision
by putting far-flung choices on her UCCA form. She’d had two
offers, from Aberdeen and Lampeter (somewhere in Wales) and had no
interest in going to either.

But instead of
two-fingering Lal Doherty, Angela cowered inside her school blazer,
nibbled a knob of raw pastry and knew she was beaten. The murphia had
struck again.

The local murphia
was a loose-knit but cohesive cabal of Wilmesbury-based Irish who
scratched each other’s backs whenever possible, county feuds
carried over from home permitting. The murphia influence was vital in
working-class jobs because anything vaguely middle-class and
professional was quickly sewn up by the Order of Nicodemus, the
Catholic church’s answer to the Freemasons. In Wilmesbury, the
order were also anti-Irish, ranged against the superstitious
peasantry who gave restrained, royalist Catholicism a bad name.
Rachel’s father, a wealthy solicitor, had turned down an
invitation to join the Order of Nicodemus. He was a member of the
anti-Nazi league instead.